Everything is drawn at once
A whole building model draws its walls, slabs, ducts and furniture together. The duct somebody asked about sits behind a wall, and the first five minutes of the meeting go to rotating the model instead of discussing it.
BIM viewer
Isolate objects in an IFC model
A model with thousands of objects is only useful in a meeting when everyone looks at the same few of them. This page shows how to get there in Fidrel’s 3D viewer: find objects by name or class, hide what is in the way, isolate what is being discussed and bring everything back before the next question.
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Why a full model gets in the way
Nobody can name the object
People say the duct above the corridor, or read out a tag from a drawing. Without a search that matches names, classes and levels, finding that one object means opening branch after branch of a tree.
A hidden object nobody remembers hiding
After half an hour of hiding things, the screen no longer shows the building. The next person cannot tell whether a missing wall is a model error or just a setting, and starts a second discussion about it.
How the tree is organized
Each model in the tree is grouped by level, and each level by object type, with a count beside every row. When two or more models are open, such as architecture and mechanical, the panel is headed Models and a row for each model sits above its levels. The same two buttons appear on every level and every type: one frames the group in the view, the other shows or hides it, and its label reads Show or hide followed by the name. That makes the tree a fast way to switch off a whole floor without selecting a single object.
BIM & 3D
What the search looks at
The search box matches an object’s name, its GUID, its IFC class, the readable name of that class and its level. It filters the tree and leaves the model where it is. Type a level to see only what is on it, type a class to see one kind of object, or paste a GUID from another tool to land on exactly one. The match is on text you can see in the tree, so a search for a word that appears in no name, class or level finds nothing.
From a crowded model to the objects on the agenda
Step 1
Search the model tree
Open the Model tree and type in Search objects. The tree narrows to objects whose name, GUID, IFC class or level contains your words, opens the levels it finds and opens a type when it holds fewer than 30 matches. If nothing fits, the tree says No objects match the search.
Step 2
Select what you mean
Click the object in the model or choose its row in the tree, which also moves the camera to it. Hide and Isolate stay disabled until something is selected, and then they act on your selection.
Step 3
Hide, isolate or see through
Hide takes the selected objects out of the view, and Isolate hides everything else. X-ray keeps every object but makes the model see-through, so you can follow a duct through a wall. For a whole level or type, use the eye button on its tree row.
Step 4
Bring everything back
Choose Show all. While anything is hidden, the viewer shows a Hidden objects line with the count and a Show all button beside it, so nobody mistakes a partial view for the whole model.
Using the controls in a meeting
Agree the order before you share the screen: search, select, isolate, discuss, Show all. The color legend works the same way, because clicking a group there hides or shows that group, and Show all clears those as well as anything hidden from the tree or the toolbar. If you need a cut as well, the section box limits the view to one floor or one room after you have isolated, and X-ray is the better choice when the wall itself is part of the question and should stay on screen.
What these controls do not do
Hiding and isolating change how you look at the model, not the model: the objects and the IFC file stay as they were uploaded. Which objects you hide is not saved with the model and is not shared, so a colleague opens the same model with every object shown. The tree search does not look inside property values such as materials. A model file can be at most 512 MB, so a very large model is split, for example by building or level, before it is uploaded. Fidrel makes no statement about how many objects a view holds or how fast it draws.
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Use the eye button on the rows of the levels you do not need. Each level and each object type in the Model tree has one, and Show all brings them back. The section box is the other way to limit the view to one floor.
Hide removes the selected objects and leaves the rest. Isolate does the opposite and removes everything except the selection. Both need a selected object first.
Yes. The search matches name, GUID, IFC class and level, so a GUID copied from another tool narrows the tree to that object.
No. It only changes what the viewer draws. The uploaded IFC file and every object in it stay as they were, and Show all restores the full view.
No. X-ray keeps every object in the view and makes the model see-through. Switch it off again with the same button.
The viewer shows Hidden objects with a count while anything is hidden, and a Show all button next to it brings the objects back.